


Kiss Meme

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Kisses, M/M, Meme fics, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 02:20:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6101569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fics written from the Valentine's Day kiss meme.  A variety of pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kadar/Malik 3, uncertainty

**Author's Note:**

> Two things:  
> 1\. we are hosting an around-the-world ficathon/fanworks drive at Tumblr (to be hosted on AO3 for fics) and would love you to [check it out/join in](http://fanworksaroundtheworld.tumblr.com/post/138309974510/a-fanwork-drive-focused-on-creating-new-assassins)
> 
> 2\. All the following stories are prompts sent to me at tumblr for the valentines day kiss meme.

Kadar was kneeling on the ground halfway between the fire and Malik’s turned back.  It was too dark to see every detail of his brother carefully but he saw the threaded-together stretch of his fingers across the back of his neck.  He saw the way his head fell forward and the staccato lift and drop of his shoulders as he breathed.  There was safety in the space between them, a continuation of the unspoken things they had done so well to ignore and avoid. 

 

There was wisdom in allow this retreat.  Kadar looked back at the fire and he tried to summon up some sense of shame.  He worked through his memories, through the morals he had been given as a child, and he tried to pair them up with the sensation in his chest and the smoldering fire that nestled itself deep in his belly every time he looked at Malik.  Maybe, if he had tried hard enough, he could have fond some _good_  reason to forgo pressing the issue but the only reasonable excuse he could grasp was how quickly he had been pushed back by his brother.

 

That was a funny word, that one, _brother_.  They were hardly _brothers_ , any more than any man in the order was a brother.  The circumstances of their birth were erased by the demands of the Creed.  Malik was as much a stranger to him as any man in his age group.  Kadar as strange to Malik as any of his peers.  If there parents had any objection to finding solace in one another it would have been the regurgitated teachings of religious men and the Creed did not subscribe to any belief or code on the matter.

 

Kadar looked away from the fire, toward the scuffle of noise that was moving closer and found Malik very close again.  “Perhaps I–” he began to say, like he could smooth over the anger and the shock that had made Malik’s face twist all out of shape.  

 

But Malik’s hand was against his chest and his lips were against Kadar’s.  The touch was so light and tender it seemed confused about whether it wanted to commit.  It was there and gone again with Malik’s eyebrows flinching like he was embarrassed to have tried and Kadar’s lifted a hand to cup it around his face and nodded his head.  He lifted up higher on his knees and pressed his mouth against his brother’s.  Malik’s eyes were open and looking back at his, his hand pressed against Kadar’s arm like he wanted to push him back (again) but he tightened his fingers instead.  And his eyes slid closed as he tipped his head and they were breathing the same air between them.  Malik hummed like a cat purring when Kadar’s tongue touched his; that hesitation that stalled them faded with the sound.  

 

Malik kissed him like he _meant_  it and Kadar pulled him down into the dirt with him.


	2. Altmal, 62 Grief

There were words, surely, for situations like this one.  There were things that one was expected to say: the sort of eloquent, effortless offerings of sympathy that poured so easily out of others.  There were gestures, of course there were, of support and of empathy that transcended the filmy restriction of words.  

 

But Altair stood three feet behind and to the left, working out how to cross that space.  He was sorting through the debris inside of his skull, looking for anything that made _sense_  here.  His thoughts were all disorderly, his attempts at phrasing them into words were haphazard.  He thought: 

 

 _I’m sorry_ ,

 but

_I’ll be here._

And,

 _Please do not be sad_ ,

then again,

 _if you are sad, I will be stand with you_.

 

But someone was crying, not very far away from him and Altair didn’t like the sound of it.  He hadn’t ever liked the sound of crying, he hadn’t liked the sight of it.  He couldn’t shake the feeling that there were things he should _do_  and things he should _say_ when people started crying.

 

(Some people are made different, he had heard his Grandmother say once.)

 

Altair took a step forward and wished he hadn’t but Malik looked over his shoulder at him.  There was pink all around his eyes but his face was dry.  The quirk of his lips seemed to be fighting back the sort of agony of emotion that Altair could not being to imagine.  But his hand reached back with his fingers spread out and Altair was too close to ignore the invitation.  He’d come too far to leave now.  So he took Malik’s hand and he stood at his side.  

 

None of the jagged words inside his skull seemed to fit so when he said, “I’m here,” he meant, _I don’t know what to do_.  And when that made Malik’s whole face flush pink-then-red-spots and his eyes water with helpless tears, Altair couldn’t figure out where he’d gone wrong.  

 

That wasn’t important, so much, as the clench of Malik’s fingers around his and the heat of his body as he leaned against Altair’s chest.  His hair was thick and dark, tickling the underside of his jaw and Altair tipped his head and kissed the top of his head.  Malik pressed his face against his shoulder and he cried and Altair closed his eyes and rubbed his back.


	3. Rauf/mystery person, 2/3th kiss, long overdue acknowledgement of worth.

Rauf was not as young a man as he had once been.  His youth had passed him in a frenzy of motion, caught in between the abhorrent anticipation of a real mission and the sad reality of his own inadequacy.  When he was more a child than a man, he had been fired with jealousy that his chance at greatness had been robbed from him.  It had been given away to dull-witted boys with quieter feet and foolish brains.  Time had tempered his rage the way Rashid had pampered his ego.

Rauf had grown fat on compliments; he had gone content and blind under the constant, doting approval of his mentor.  Anger had grayed to spiteful arrogance as he spent his days teaching little boys to wield weapons far larger than him.  His hands had gone rough not from fighting the many battles the Assassins had been brought together to fight but by cuffing stupid boys across the head.  His chest and arms and legs and face bore only the scars of long afternoons in the training ring.  His bones knew the weariness of carrying the same weight to-and-from the practice ring, of climbing the same steep incline to the same castle every day of his life since he was a child.

 

And in the aftermath of Rashid’s utter betrayal, Rauf sat in contemplation of the errors of his life.  Out in the training yard, long after the boys had gone to dinner and bed, he sat balanced on the slats of the enclosure and thought of the ones that had come and gone.

 

It seemed, the bodies piled around him faster than he could keep count of the lost boys that had been sent away to their death.  It seemed to him, _now_ , that there must have been a pattern in the losses.  It seemed to him, far too late to matter, that it had been his voice in Rashid’s ear telling him of the progress of the boys.  

 

It had been Rauf that went to their Mentor and told him of the promise of the young boys still grieving the loss of their Mothers and Fathers.  Rauf had told him of the passion and the dedication and the raw _talent_  when he saw it.  And Rashid had taken his boys, the ones that he had been sworn to train, and he molded them into killers and he used them like his own personal puppets.  

 

There was so little left of the dream that had drawn him in.  There was only a gray shadow of the purpose that had seemed righteous once.  Rauf sat and he thought of the dead; of his guilt, of his uselessness inside the order.

 

“The day has ended.”  Malik did not intrude but stand with his hand resting across the top slats a comfortable distance from him.  “You should rest, another will begin tomorrow.”

 

Rauf huffed a laugh in sad acknowledgement of that fact.  He had seen this boy as a _child_ , a skinny thing with unruly hair that screamed war cries in advance of his clumsy attacks.  He had become a calculated killer in the years since he joined them and Rauf had whispered ( _he is challenged only by Altair, they could overcome any obstacle if only they could work together_ ) and he wondered _now_  if that had not been the reason Malik and Kadar were sent to die.  “Should I take it as an order, Dai?”

 

Malik snorted at the title, at the robes he wore.  He turned and put a foot against a lower slat to lift himself so he was sitting next to Rauf.  His face was contemplative, still young enough to be wounded, but his smile was an old-man’s sad memory.  “No,” he said simply.  He looked at the sky for a moment, his upturned face catching the last dying light of the day.  Grief and loss had robbed Malik of the last roundness of his youth.  Every line of his body was hard-edged.  “I only mean,” he said after a pause, he looked at Rauf as he spoke, “that your rest is well-earned, and should be enjoyed.”  For a brief second, Malik seemed indecisive and then he leaned forward to press a kiss against the humorless rebuttal caught on Rauf’s mouth.  

 

It was a gesture so uniquely innocent and so sincerely offered that Rauf was uncertain how to respond to it.  Malik wavered with his balanced tipped so far and Rauf caught him with a fist in his robe.  He held him there with more intent than he had meant to offer but he did not discourage the soft sigh of breath that breezed over his cheek or the sweet tilt of Maik’s mouth across his, opening to share a breath between them.  It was his tongue that slid into Malik’s mouth and his hand that touched his face like a _revelation_.  And it was him that found _comfort_  in this small offering.  

 

“I can’t,” Rauf said when he remembered himself.  “I could be your father.”  

 

Malik snorted at that.  He might have made a case for it; there was nobody that had turned Malik away once his mind was set on it.  

 

So Rauf said, “I told him that you were far more clever than Altair, I told him that you would best his pet in the end.  I did this,” Rauf said as he motioned at the empty sleeve between them. 

 

Malik considered that with his eyes half-lidded, looking down.  When he looked up again, he said, “Where will it end?  This blame that we have to spread.  What man here is not guilty of contributing to this?  If you are guilty for speaking your mind, I am guilty for having one.  I was not clever enough, I did not best his pet in the end.  But Rashid is gone now; he has met a cruel end at the hands of the weapon he thought he had crafted.”

 

Rauf looked toward the castle.  “Altair has always had two masters.”

 

And Malik rolled his eyes.  “And so I have no right to my own life?”  He might have said more but his lips pulled into a sneer reminiscent of the child he had been.  He sighed through his nose like a discontent animal.  He stood again, caught between leaving in anger and staying to argue his point.  

 

Rauf stood and turned so there was only the fence around the training ring between them.  He rested his hands against the worn wood and Malik looked at him with his eyebrows in knots and his mouth still caught in a sneer.  “We all make sacrifices fo-”

 

But Malik caught him by the shirt front and pulled him forward.  Malik kissed him with _hotter_  intent than the time before.  His mouth wet and his meaning was _clear._   Rauf wrapped his fingers in the excess of the black robe he wore and held him there, he kissed him back with stalled-passion, caught between thinking of how stupid they were to risk the ire or the others and how desperately he wanted the relief from doubt.  

 

He thought, once upon a time, when they were both younger.  Malik had stood in this training yard with his mouth bloody from fighting.  He had lingered long after the others had gone, even after Rauf had tried to send him away and he had said, _I’d rather stay_  and when they were alone and the sky was dim as the sun went down, Malik had kissed him with youthful energy and been pushed away.  

 

He thought, there were many things he had given to the creed and many things that the order had taken from him.  He thought of Malik, carrying the evidence of his sacrifices and the unwanted rewards for the things that he had been robbed of.  He thought of himself, no longer a young man, and the sum of these things felt as if they would crush him.  

 

“Come to bed,” Malik said when they parted.  His breath was ragged and his hand was still fisted in Rauf’s clothing.  “You have earned your rest.” 


	4. altmal 20 affection

Altair did not possess things.  If there was a reason that he had been given (and there must have been at some point) he had forgotten it in the years since he was given to the Assassin order to be trained.  He was too young to keep anything for his own, not even the robes he wore were his own, not the weapons he trained with.  Everything belonged to the Order and nothing belonged to Altair.  When he was still young enough to bother with getting angry, he had collected small stones and bird feathers in deliberate defiance against the command.  They grew the way his pointless anger grew, expanding and expanding until discovered.

 

Years and innumerable beatings later, his collections were no less vast but not so literal.  He collected remembered things: the number of times he bloodied Abbas’ nose, the sounds of the eagles that flew across Masyaf, the heights of the towers and trees and buildings he had climbed and this:

 

The number of times he had made Malik smile.  There was a great debt of Malik’s smiles in the world.  They were pure things, unsullied by years of being raised to kill, not yet broken by the Order that they had been devoted to.  Malik’s smiles were private things, not easily given.

 

Malik smiled because Altair sang for him, in a stolen corner of an empty house.  He smiled because Altair was sitting in his lap without a fight, because Malik had _won_  a fight (again) and he was full of arrogance at his own accomplishment and delight at the sound of Altair’s voice.  Caught there, beyond the observation of the stagnant expectations of higher commands, Altair would have sang until his voice was sore.  He would sing until they were old men together, sharing aching bones and sagging wrinkles.  

 

Malik’s hands were under his clothes, his eyes were bright as the smile that spread across his face: so sincere that not even Altair’s fingers tracing along the shape of it could pull it from his face.  “I like how you sing,” he said.  “I like that you sing _for me_.”  And he meant _only me_.

 

Altair said, “is that all you like?” because there were fingers tracing the hard-won muscles of his body.  Because Malik’s gentle smile turned feral and his soft touch hardened to a purposeful point.  Altair was rolled onto his back (so easily) and Malik shook his head with that smile still caught on his face.

 

“No,” he said just before he kissed Altair, like _no, there are many things I like about you_.


	5. Federico/Kadar, 3, surprise

“You know what I heard,” was the abrupt way that Kadar (Malik’s little brother, Federico’s unfortunate fixation, the world’s most delighted and cruel tease) invited himself to sit comfortably close to Federico’s side.  He was one third distracted with editing the paper that was due tomorrow and two thirds watching the stupid football match that Ezio and Altair were currently screaming at.  

 

Kadar stretched his whole body out in a way so purposefully and delicately sexual that there was no mistaking how he managed to recline himself even closer to Federico’s side.  He didn’t wait for Federico to indicate that he was interested in whatever Kadar had heard because the boy was saying, “is it true Italians only drink espresso?”

 

There was nothing inherently provocative about those words but Federico was helpless to do more than turn his head to stare at the terribly pleased smile that crossed Kadar’s face.  He managed to catch the bastard licking his own lips with the utmost satisfaction at having rattled him.  “I guess,” was all he said before he stood up to escape the slow crawl of Kadar’s fingers under his shirt.  

 

“Where are you going?” Ezio shouted at him.  Both of his hands were motioning at the screen because it was _football_  and one was simply not allowed to leave while the game was on.  Altair saved him from having to come up with an actual explanation by shouting in glorious victory.

 

Federico retreated to the docile quiet of the kitchen to contemplate his life and all the choices that led to him getting boners about naughty little brothers of indeterminate age.  (He sincerely hoped, with whatever lagging moral fiber he still possessed that his new obnoxious obsession was of legal age.)  He washed his hands and face at the kitchen sink (since he was there) and pressed his hands to the rounded edge of the counter top while he tried to convince himself that Kadar had probably gotten bored of the shouting and wandered off again.  

 

“I heard another thing,” Kadar said.  He didn’t look innocent as he stood there with his one-size-too-small shirt and a pair of jeans that he must have shoplifted (judging by his brother’s outrage every time he saw Kadar wearing them).  

 

Federico didn’t whine, _why are you doing this to me_ , but he turned around to lean back against his counter and sighed out, “what?”

 

Kadar was smiling, all pink in the cheeks and biting his lip as he dragged his fingers along the edge of the counter as he walked toward him.  “I heard Italians kiss each other, even strangers.”

 

“Did you hear that?” Federico asked.  Kadar nodded.  He had come to a halt close enough the heat of his body mixing with Federico’s.  Close enough his toes inside his socks were stroking across the top of Federico’s as he grinned.  There was a tilt of his whole body was inviting all attention to his crotch.  “How old are you?”

 

“Nineteen,” Kadar said.  “Show me?  How you Italians kiss everyone?”

 

There was relief in knowing he wasn’t being terrorized by a child.  Federico considered his options: telling the kid to leave him alone, doing what he said, grabbing him by the shirt and dragging him away to a private, flat surface.  “Fine.”  He straightened away from the counter and motioned Kadar low enough he could rest his hands on the man’s (impressively solid) arms and he leaned to kiss one cheek and then the other and would have went back to kiss the first side again but Kadar’s hands pressed against his face to hold him still and kissed him on the mouth.  

 

Oh-and-it was(n’t unexpected) but _surprising_  nonetheless.  Federico was in shock, dumb and still, and then he dug his fingertips into Kadar’s arms and kissed him back.  He would have kissed him for every single moment of seduction that he’d suffered through but Kadar laughed just when it got good, all caught in giggles that wracked through his too-tall body.  

 

“What?” Federico demanded.

 

“I was thinking about Altair,” Kadar said.  “Not like that,” before Federico could get offended, “we’ve had an unspoken contest to see who could get laid first.  He’s going to be so angry.”  And that, apparently, was hilarious.  Kadar mocked his unimpressed pout, “Don’t make that face, I just said you were going to get laid.”

 

“Maybe I wanted a date,” Federico countered.

 

“You can take me out for tacos after,” Kadar promised.  Then he put his arm around Federico’s neck because he was taller than anyone had any need to be and he kissed him with smug triumph.  Federico was working up toward being offended and working his hands under Kadar’s clothes simultaneously.  There was no contest which would win, only a quick calculation of how quickly they could retire to his bedroom.


	6. Robert De Sable/Malik, 12, helpless

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rated R for violence, wounds, blood, psychos.  The usual.

 

It was cool this far underground; the cold a compliment to the darkness that hung from the low ceilings like spiderwebs, dripping little gray shadows here and there.  There was no extraneous noise here, only the creak of the rows wrapped so tightly around his raw wrists.  The drag of his own breath and the steady-paced-beat of his own heart.  

His heart; Malik concentrated on that.  The beat of it, the reliable pulse at his wrists beneath the ropes.  The throb of it in his neck.  He thought of it in his chest, safely caged behind his ribs. 

 

There was wrongness in the civil rhythm of his heart.  It should have been a desperate rabbit, screaming for it’s life, running-and-running from the predator that pursued it.  He should have been blank with shock, stricken with fear, grasping at some last shred of hope for his own survival.

 

He tightened his hands on the rope that ran across his palm and twisted it tighter.  The pain was insignificant.  The distraction so minor he hardly noticed it.  The silence of his contemplation was interrupted by a careless clatter of footsteps.  Malik looked up from where he had taken refuge in the corner of the dark room.  His eyes had been closed so long it was difficult to see through the foggy light of the lamps.  

 

It took a moment for Robert to become a distinct figure in the fog of his vision.  Malik sighed (oh and he _marvelled_  at his heartbeat) as he got to his feet.  The rope pulled at his wrists as he stepped over to the man.  His bare skin prickled with something he might have named ‘disgust’ only a few days ago and now he was not sure what the sensation meant.  He stopped not even a full arm’s length away from Robert.

 

“I suppose that you did not expect this outcome,” he said.  They were the first words that he had spared the man since they had found themselves in this small room.  While he had passed his time in quiet contemplation, Robert had gone hoarse from talking.  

 

He was there now, on his knees at Malik’s feet.  He was there with purple rings around his neck, with the tips of his fingers gone dark from constricted flow of blood.  There were stripes across his back, livid ashy burns across his chest.  His breath was shallow and ragged; a strange wet noise had developed like he was drowning from the inside out.  His pale skin was sallow from shock, his flesh cool and damp when touched.  There was no focus in his eyes, not even the animal instinct to save itself.  

 

Malik sank low, so he was crouching in front of the man.  He unwound the rope from his left wrist and slapped his hand across Robert’s face.  He dug his thumb in under his jaw where the soft flesh was pulpy from the damage.  It barely registered in the man’s shocked face but his mouth opened from the pressure.  His tongue was cracked and pale.  The bleeding red lines on it had ceased oozing some time ago.  

 

“I imagine you felt very powerful when you killed my brother.”  There was the dimmest recognition in Robert’s face.  Malik disliked the taste of French words in his mouth but they were a necessary sort of compromise presently.  “Yes,” he said to Robert as his eyes narrowed like he was working toward realizing how they had come to be here.  “I was an assassin once; I was not sent to kill you but that is a separate story.  I watched you.”  He threw the rope around Robert’s neck, dropped his hand from his face to fix the rope across the purple rings.  “You watched him dying, I think you must have enjoyed it.”

 

“No,” Robert said very softly.

 

“I know,” Malik assured him.  It took no effort to tip Robert onto his back.  It took no strength to keep him in place.  The rope slid against itself, saw with friction as it tightened.  And it went oh-so-slowly, digging deeper wounds into the raw flesh of his palms.  “You held him here, you touched his face as he struggled.  You said he had beautiful eyes.”  Malik dipped down as Robert’s abused body made some feeble attempt to fight.  “You kissed him while he was gasping for breath.”  

 

Malik kissed Robert (again, again), and licked the taste of his ragged attempts to breath out of his gaping mouth.  He tightened the rope around Robert’s throat as he hovered there, nose-to-nose, watching the fear on his face as his body tried in vain to find breath.  He watched the fear mutate into hope as the groping blackness of death must have started sneaking in around the edges of his vision.  “You should have killed me first, Robert.”

 

This time, Malik did not loosen the rope.  He let the man enjoy the death he had begged for.  And when he was still again, lax and relieved in his death, he sat back.  

 

Altair had come, drawn by the fruitless kicking of Robert’s dying body.  He hovered just beyond touching, close enough to see and far enough away to run if necessary.  “There is Al Mualim left,” he said.  But also, “I cannot bring him to you.”

 

Malik looked at him.  He got to his feet (with his heart like a steady drum, neither angry nor sad) and walked to where Altair stood with assassin robes dangling from his fist.  “There is one more than Al Mualim,” he said as he took the robes.  Altair’s fingers were very warm but his face was cool stone.  

 

“Nine lives for mine,” Altair said in return.  “My debt is already paid.”

 

Malik smiled and Altair did not.  He would have liked it better if the man flinched but he had abandoned horror and objection many deaths ago.  Now he stood and let Malik kiss his lax mouth.  He did not encourage it as he once had and he did not shrink away as he did the last time.  He merely withstood it.


	7. Altmal, 13, greed (Hellfire universe)

rated NC-17 for sex

Malik measured their progress by distance and Altair by body count.  They were squatters in a poor district of a fine city, subsisting on stolen food and the charity of men that were far too distracted by the chaos of the Great White City.  They’d escaped the siege on the city gone mad, evaded the martial law that spread like an infection from the banks of Aminali to the Northern Shore.

Altair was bare-skin and bent-back dipping the fine-tipped quill into the stolen ink.  The bandages he spread out across the broken table in front of him were covered in tight-tight characters.  The runes so precise they had edges like knives.  Malik was laying back on the bed made of stolen carpets and pillows and blankets.  It was a bird’s nest, built to suit him. 

 

Everything was so very clear now, everything made _sense_  to him.  The entire balance of the world lay before him and there was devout, _divine_  fairness in it.  Malik shifted on his bed and Altair’s spine straightened at the sound, his head turned just enough that he had angled his ear to catch any further sounds.  He did not look, he never looked (not _yet_ ).  Malik pulled one of his legs up so his knee was bent.  The clothes they’d taken were tighter than the ones he was accustom to and the _intimate_  grip they had on his body caused him a moment of pause.  But it was _nice_  to run his fingers down his the inside of his thigh, it was _pleasant_  and _tingly_  to feel how quickly and eagerly his body responded to it.  He let that simmer in the depth of his belly as he trailed his fingers from his knee to the very top of his inner thigh.  It would have been _simple_  to touch his dick, to tease it to full interest but he didn’t.

 

It was more satisfying to let his mouth open, to drag wet breath through his damp lips as he taunted himself.  A fine sweat broke out at his temples, down along the inside of his leg.  His trapped dick was objecting about the constricting fabric as he watched the ripple of annoyance and animal _lust_  that ran down the muscles of Altair’s back.  It tightened in his arms as he closed his ink with the utmost calm.  It grew like a pink blush all across his shoulders. 

 

Still, Altair did not look at him.

 

No, Altair stayed there, sitting with his knees to the ground and his hands on his lap.  His back straight to keep that puckered, ugly scar from pulling and hurting him.  

 

Malik loosened the fastenings of his clothes.  He pulled the shirt off and dropped it to the side.  He leaned back on his shoulders and lifted his hips to push his pants off.  His dick was eager and damp against his belly when he laid down again.  He watched the bristle of hatred that came like a tight-clenched-jaw and that throbbing pulse in Altair’s neck.

 

But he didn’t _look_  because the monster that Malik had collared was far too _behaved_  and so full of petulant hatred.  No, Malik could have toyed with him the whole of the night.  He had done it once, he had teased his own body to a point of _agony_  for the want of release and Altair had _never_  looked at him.  Not until Malik said, “come now,” like calling an obedient dog.

 

Altair moved like an animal, crawling across the dirty ground between them, his knees dragging in raw dirt, his fingertips keeping balance for him.  He gripped his fist tight around Malik’s knee to pull him off the pillows, so he was flat to the blankets.  And he was up between his thighs with absolute _control_ , not a shudder or shiver of _want_.  But his hand moved to cup around Malik’s throat like he wanted to _strangle_  him but he couldn’t.  He kissed Malik with divine _greed_ , so pure and unashamed it tasted like the _blood_  that had condemned them.  (But Malik always tasted blood in Altair’s mouth, he lapped at it when they fucked.)

 

Altair’s right hand closed around his arm, just above the elbow where the skin was still filled with the pitch black curse and his fingers tightened like _vice grips._ The encompassing pain like _liquid fire_  that moved-beneath his skin like a current.  Once disturbed it would _ache_  for hours and Altair’s breath was just against the underside of his chin, laughing at the started shout of pain at it.  So when he kissed him again it was _triumph_  and _aggression_  but it was all a poor cover for the sort of mindless _greed_  that had the man crawling to worship him.  

 

Malik wrapped his legs around him, he dug his heels into the long unhealed scar and he scoured his nails down Altair’s arms, drawing new blood over the old.  His teeth were wet (and pink) and he said, “fuck me,” as the fire consumed his arm.

 

Altair fucked him and Malik wondered (maybe) if he weren’t being conditioned to need _this_ , to dream of it and wish for it and desire it, _this_  miserable combination of bitter pain and precise pleasure.  


	8. altmal, 7 relief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from an as yet unwritten AU where Altair is a trans!man from a traditional Muslim family.

“ _That’s_  because you don’t _care!”_

“That is _categorically_ untrue!” Malik shouted back.  The anger made his face red and his fingers spread out.  His agitation was in every motion of his body, throwing his arms out to the side like he could demonstrate how _wrong_  the statement was.  “Tell me what _i_  have done to make you feel that way!”

“Everyone knows it!” Altair shouted back, “everyone is _whispering_  it beyond my back like it’s some great– _stupid_  game.  Like _I can’t_  hear them!  Like–like, and _you_  act like it’s nothing!  Of course its easy for you!  Of _course_  it’s nothing to you because they aren’t _talking_  about you!  They aren’t saying _shit_  about you.  So don’t stand there and _tell me_  that you care because you _don’t.”_

Malik wasn’t looking at him and it was a rage far more hurtful than frightening.  No Malik was looking sideways, at his dresser, at the collection of figures and things from the movies he idolized.  He was grinding his teeth with his hands on his hips.  That tiny sliver of space between them was an impassable canyon and Altair was watching all the bridges burn and he couldn’t _stop_  because he’d reached a limit of tolerance _three hours ago_  and it had been an agonizing crawl through the rest of school, biting his tongue on the bus and dragging his bones up the stairs.  

Malik’s anger exploded with a quick turn of his body and his foot kicking at the wall.  The shock of the noise was echos in the room, the shaky rock of a picture frame on the wall that shattered when it hit the ground but Malik was turning back around to look at him.  He spread his arms, the anger caught at the edges of his mouth was more severe than the words (like defeat) that fell out of his mouth, “you’re right.  I _don’t know_  what it’s like.  They _aren’t_  talking about _me_.  I can try to imagine it all day and all night and I’ll _never_  know what you feel like but that _does not_  mean that I _don’t care_.  I’ll do whatever you need me to do, Altair.  If you need me to fight them, I will.”

“It wouldn’t help.”

Malik’s eyes widened (because he’d said that very same thing not even fifteen minutes ago) but he grit his teeth to keep from saying anything.  “What do you need?”

(Altair thought _safety_  like _safe harbor_  like _sanctuary_  and none of those ideas, none of those _needs_  had words in any language they shared the way he needed it.)  

“Hot shower?  Hot tea?  We can watch Cowboys Vs Aliens?  I could rub your back?”

But Altair interrupted him, caught him by the shirt sleeve because there were no _words_  for the thing he needed.  He wrapped his arms around Malik (around his _husband_ , however strange that idea was) and pulled him until they were pressed all together.  Everything wrong with Altair’s fucking body was a momentary shudder when Malik hugged him.  “You hate that movie,” Altair said against Malik’s neck and that was an understatement for which there was no suitable comparison.  Malik _detested_  that movie and had made no secret of it.

“But I love you,” Malik said back (as desperate as Altair felt), “and I don’t know how to help you and I don’t know what you need.”

Altair could have laughed at that.  He could have gone mad laughing at how helplessly stupid they were.  But he pressed his hand to Malik’s face instead, pushed him back just far enough to kiss him.  They hadn’t worked that out yet, five and a half months into marriage, nine years after Malik proposed to him, and they kissed like strangers.  There was never, not once,  _hesitation_  in the way that Malik kissed him.  Never _resignation._   Never _disgust_  or _obligation_  but the most sweetly sincere _desire_.  “Thank you,” Altair said with their foreheads pressed together.  


	9. Federico/Edward, 142, resignation

Three months into a one night stand, Federico was sitting on the curb outside some pub that opened early and closed late, listening to the music that broke through the walls to rebellious freedom outside.  His business-man shirt was unbuttoned halfway down his chest and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows.  His jacket was in the car and he considered going to get it while he smoked his cigarette down to the filter (again) but the settling cool of the air was well suited the lagging anger he felt.  

 

It felt like, all at once, all the world around him and inside of him were at balance again.  

 

Edward showed up between cigarette 5, the man who needed a light (and a shower), and cigarette 6.  There was glitter in Edward’s (dirty) hair, caught on his cheeks, collecting in that scar by his eye so that when he sat down (hard) it exploded like a cloud from his shoulders and his face.  Rather than make some attempt at an apology (and for what, when neither of them seemed to know what they were doing) he pushed his arm against Federico’s and motioned at the cigarette he was holding.  

 

They passed it back and forth between them, savoring the ashy taste of the smoke.  They appreciated the noise behind them, the gathering chill and the intrepid drunks that came and went as they waited.  

 

When it was done, Federico put it out against the ground beneath his feet and turned his head to look at Edward.  The man didn’t look _repentant_  but he never had.  Instead, Edward said, “I have no regrets.”

 

Federico might have nodded but he kissed Edward instead.  One last kiss, like a sigh, like a nod of acknowledgement.  The press of familiar lips against his absent all the drunken fire that had fueled them.  Edward touched his hair, spread his thick-rough fingers across the side of his head and held him caught there just long enough to finish whispering their good-byes without regret.  Then he let him go.  Federico stood up and Edward tipped his head back to watch him go.  

 

“Maybe next time?” Edward called after him.

 

Federico turned around, stepped backward while he snorted at that notion.  “Not likely,” he said.  “Take care of yourself.”


End file.
